American College of Education Aces CTV Performance with MNTN

ACE brought its test-and-learn approach to MNTN, starting with prospecting and layering in retargeting as they gathered insights about what really moved the needle.

With such specific prospective student groups to market to, precision audience targeting was vital to ACE.

“One of the things we were excited about early on was the ability to drill into detailed audience segments — that specificity is not possible with all CTV ad platforms,” said Vince Arezzi, ACE’s Vice President, Strategic Performance Marketing. “MNTN’s audience segmentation has really helped us to shape our campaigns around different vertical markets, because finding a nursing prospect is very different from finding an educator.”

Using MNTN’s robust audience tools, they zeroed in on high-intent segments like registered nurses, K-12 educators, and higher education degree seekers. When it came to retargeting, they built audiences to support their prospecting efforts, targeting high-intent website visitors along with specific prospective student verticals who had previously engaged with their advertisements.

While this audience strategy delivered strong results, ACE’s innovative spirit led them to enhance their approach with MNTN Matched™.

“We embrace the use of AI within ad platforms,” said Arezzi. “So we were eager to try MNTN Matched and we jumped in with our largest segment — education. Being able to layer in specific keywords that then drive tighter audience matches was highly effective for us.”

ACE was also very intentional with their creative strategy. They started with broad creative highlighting their programs’ flexibility and benefits for working adults, then introduced tailored messaging by vertical. All of their creative features upbeat music, a strong voiceover, and their website URL in the closing card.

To further support the creation of engaging advertisements, ACE enrolled in MNTN’s Creative-as-a-Subscription™ (CaaS). Powered by QuickFrame, CaaS allows advertisers to bundle creative and media to maximize their results on Connected TV by delivering a constant stream of fresh creative.

“We all know that with this type of marketing, you continually need fresh creative,” Arezzi said. “And that’s something we’ve changed drastically since our first year using MNTN. Initially, we ran largely the same creative to the different vertical markets because video is expensive and time consuming. We couldn’t update creative as often as we would have liked. But now, we fully leverage CaaS for video development and can continually cycle through and test new creative every 30 to 45 days.”

ACE’s test-driven mindset and early adoption of new MNTN features fueled strong performance — especially during the crucial back-to-school advertising season. In August — the final and most important month of their BTS push — they achieved a 34% decrease in overall cost per acquisition (CPA) and a 27% decrease in cost per visit (CPV) month-over-month (MoM).

These results, in addition to consistent overall performance, ultimately led to MNTN becoming one of ACE’s largest advertising channels by spend.

Beyond the immediate performance gains, ACE’s audience testing unearthed unexpected insights.

“We thought general awareness would come first — then we’d retarget with vertical-specific messaging,” said Arezzi. ”But our three-month test showed the opposite was more effective.”

Their early adoption of MNTN Matched further accelerated their performance improvements. Within 45 days of launching, they experienced notable improvements in CPA and Verified Visits™. Pleased with how effective MNTN Matched was in such a short period of time, ACE now leans on the feature to drive their audience targeting.

Strong campaign performance paired with valuable audience insights established MNTN Performance TV as a cornerstone of ACE’s advertising efforts. As the institution continues to expand their programs and reach new student populations, CTV with MNTN will remain a vital piece to their growth strategy during pivotal seasonal moments and beyond.